New house, New build. Show me your sump rooms

[ECOKid]

Hello All,
As im sure you know, when you get one tank, youre bound to get another. Normally a size thats double what you "swore" would be a good size for you. With this new house, there is literally a PERFECT little room that would work for a sump room. I know alot that comes with getting a sump room up and running, but i wsnted to start this thread to see if people with sump rooms would post pictures, and also id like to know what plumbing experience you had going into such a grand project. Heres a picture of the room that will be converted. I plan to keep a sump for a 56g and a redsea 750XL. hopefully i get some good sump room responses. Thanks in advance!

 

[Engloid]

I don't have any pics now, but I will sum up a little of what I have:
1.5" pipe comes down from upstairs. It goes into a 3ft sock filter that's in the top of a 55g drum which sits on cinder blocks. Coming out the side of it, near the top, is a bulkhead and elbow that lets it spill into another drum. Coming out of that drum, near the bottom, is another bulkhead. This goes to the small side of a standard 30g sump. The water level in the second drum and the sump section it goes into will remain equal. Note that so far, I have about 140g of sump volume, and no pump is needed yet. In the large side of the sump is a reef octopus skimmer and an ecotech Vectra pump which runs as a return pump. It has a small section of 1" tube on it and then goes back to 1.5" pvc and back upstairs.

In addition to that, I use a 20" synergy ghost overflow with a variation of a bean animal plumbing setup under it, which feeds to ONE return pipe that goes back to the basement. "They" said I couldn't do it that way, but I did...and it works well.

 

[ECOKid]

I don't have any pics now, but I will sum up a little of what I have:
1.5" pipe comes down from upstairs. It goes into a 3ft sock filter that's in the top of a 55g drum which sits on cinder blocks. Coming out the side of it, near the top, is a bulkhead and elbow that lets it spill into another drum. Coming out of that drum, near the bottom, is another bulkhead. This goes to the small side of a standard 30g sump. The water level in the second drum and the sump section it goes into will remain equal. Note that so far, I have about 140g of sump volume, and no pump is needed yet. In the large side of the sump is a reef octopus skimmer and an ecotech Vectra pump which runs as a return pump. It has a small section of 1" tube on it and then goes back to 1.5" pvc and back upstairs.

In addition to that, I use a 20" synergy ghost overflow with a variation of a bean animal plumbing setup under it, which feeds to ONE return pipe that goes back to the basement. "They" said I couldn't do it that way, but I did...and it works well.

Get you some pictures! Lol id love to see what they said couldnt be done. My first tank had a bean animal setup and i absolutely love it. Peace of mind, sleek and quiet. It was custom built by the first owner of the tank i bought. I hope to not run into too many problems. I will probably have a trigger system sump, nothing custom as yours. Itll be my first build so im a bit nervous. How much plumbing experience did you have before you dove it?

 

[ECOKid]

And i attached a pdf of my door lock. Ignore tht lol

 

[Engloid]

Get you some pictures! Lol id love to see what they said couldnt be done. My first tank had a bean animal setup and i absolutely love it. Peace of mind, sleek and quiet. It was custom built by the first owner of the tank i bought. I hope to not run into too many problems. I will probably have a trigger system sump, nothing custom as yours. Itll be my first build so im a bit nervous. How much plumbing experience did you have before you dove it?

The pic I posted is what some said wouldnt work. They said I had to have three separate pipes going to the basement and it wouldnt work with a trap on the siphon line and into a header.

As for experience...i have done a few fish setups, but been a journeyman pipefitter/Welder since the 80s.

 

[HiddenUser]

My tank is on the first floor and sump is in the basement. Plumbing is pretty straight forward...I have a little bit of hard PVC, but the rest of it is the Plex PVC. I prefer this way so that I have less head loss and it was fairly easy to work with.

I then run a pipe from the sump to a 120G tank which sits underneath the bench pictured. If the power goes out my tank drains ~30G of water into the sump which wasn't large enough for that, so the 120G tank below is my safety net so to speak. This way there is no need to have check valves or anything mechanical to rely on in terms of preventing a flood in my basement during power loss.

 

[Engloid]

My tank is on the first floor and sump is in the basement. Plumbing is pretty straight forward...I have a little bit of hard PVC, but the rest of it is the Plex PVC. I prefer this way so that I have less head loss and it was fairly easy to work with.

I then run a pipe from the sump to a 120G tank which sits underneath the bench pictured. If the power goes out my tank drains ~30G of water into the sump which wasn't large enough for that, so the 120G tank below is my safety net so to speak. This way there is no need to have check valves or anything mechanical to rely on in terms of preventing a flood in my basement during power loss.

I have a couple questions... I'm pretty sure that flexible PVC will reduce reliability (more prone to cracks and leaks). Do you agree?

Also...you get 30 gallons draining to the sump when power goes off? That is quite a bit. Why so much. I get maybe 10 our of a 125g and 1.5" plumbing. My sumps hold the additional amount because only one of the three are completely full.

 

[HiddenUser]

I have a couple questions... I'm pretty sure that flexible PVC will reduce reliability (more prone to cracks and leaks). Do you agree?

Also...you get 30 gallons draining to the sump when power goes off? That is quite a bit. Why so much. I get maybe 10 our of a 125g and 1.5" plumbing. My sumps hold the additional amount because only one of the three are completely full.

I would be curious to see who has had issues with Flex PVC. The stuff is pretty thick and moderately flexible so I don't necessarily see it being easy to crack or leak. Nor is it bouncing around or vibrating on anything sharp. I've seen quite a few threads where people with basement sumps or long plumbing runs are using or have used Flex PVC for many years without any problems as well. In terms of the flex PVC durability I would suppose depend on where you get the stuff from and the environment it is exposed to as well. My system has been running for a year and a half an no issues with the Flex PVC thus far. My only plumbing issues thus far have been related to a bulkhead seal.

I have that much water drain back into my sump due to where the outlets for my returns are located. When the power goes out the water back flows down my return line into the sump in my basement. I could easily 'fix' this by using Loc-Line for my returns, but I have a thing with seeing loc-line returns or power cords in a tank. It's a huge concession for me mentally to have Gyres instead of Vortechs, ha...Comparison wise you get 10G with a 125G tank and I get 35G with a 270G tank.

 

[JoshH]

In addition to that, I use a 20" synergy ghost overflow with a variation of a bean animal plumbing setup under it, which feeds to ONE return pipe that goes back to the basement. "They" said I couldn't do it that way, but I did...and it works well.

The issue here isn't that you can't do it that way as you most certainly can and it will work. The issue is it completely defeats the purpose of a bean animal system bringing it down to one drain to the sump. The whole purpose of the bean animal is redundancy with extra pipes so if the first or even second gets clogged you always have the third as an emergency. If all your drain pipes merge into one and that one pipe clogs than there really was no point in using the bean animal set up and your whole system will flood, that being the worst case scenario. HOWEVER and I'm sure you did it this way, if the bean animal drains fed into say a 4" drain pipe down to the basement you would avoid that issue. But they would have to merge with the 4" pipe individually and not merge together first and then into the 4".

 

[Engloid]

I wont hold my breath waiting on 1.5" pipe to clog up. Its been running about five years so far.

 

[JoshH]

That's great and I'm sure it will run for many years that way, just stating where the issue could be for those that might not understand why some people would have said that's not the way to do it.

 

[Engloid]

I have two one inch pipes and one 1.5" pipe....and thats not redundency. Ok.

 

[JoshH]

do those 3 pipes go down into your sump into the basement separately? ? looks to me like you have one of the 1" and the 1.5" tied together. which would mean you really only have 2 pipes. one main and one back up heading to the basement.

 

[Engloid]

It works. Argue whatever you want. It works. It does what it was intended to do. It does as others said it wouldnt. Its not the first time I have proven others to be wrong because I wasnt following the exact path of a thousand others.

 

[Farmreefer711]

This is my hill billy basement sump.

 

[JoshH]

I never said it wouldn't work man, and I don't know why other's would say it wouldn't work either. of course it's going to work it just doesn't have the same redundancy as a true bean animal. Something the OP should atleast be aware of if it's his first run at plumbing himself. Sounds like a large set up though which is always cool. Not looking to pick on things or degrade your system in any way, just pointing something out. Would love to see some pics of the sump room set up though.

 

[JoshH]

Farm those tubs are huge! Wish I had room for something like that

 

[Engloid]

I never said it wouldn't work man, and I don't know why other's would say it wouldn't work either. of course it's going to work it just doesn't have the same redundancy as a true bean animal. Something the OP should atleast be aware of if it's his first run at plumbing himself. Sounds like a large set up though which is always cool. Not looking to pick on things or degrade your system in any way, just pointing something out. Would love to see some pics of the sump room set up though.

Unless my math is failing me, one 1" pipe has a cross sectional area of .86 cu-in. Three of them adds up to 2.59 cu-in. One 1.5" pipe has an area of 2.03 cu-in.

By having the setup I do, I have a total cross sectional area of 3.76, vs 2.59 with just three 1" pipes. Not only that, but it's a lot harder to clog up a 1.5" pipe than it is a 1" pipe. Think of it like this...the sewer pipes most people have in front of their house are probably 6" pipe...and they almost never clog up. If you had several one inch pipes, with the same cross section, they'd clog up much quicker. That may be considered redundancy, but it also would greatly reduce reliability.

I may take a pic of my sump room sometime, but for now, it's not completed. I have ordered the new Neptune Apex Gold, and it's on its way. I then will work out a nice pvc setup for water changes. For now, I have a 55g drum to mix in, and then use a pvc hose up overhead to pump it over to the sump as needed. I do a change of about 30 gallons in about 5 minutes, including changing the sock filter. It takes me longer to mix water than I spend actually changing it. A lot of that is because I need to decide how I want to permanently plumb it in. I want an auto shut off with RO, which I will likely set up with a float valve and a magnetic sensor ato setup. I do a water change once a week at this point.

 

[JoshH]

You have totally missed the point I was getting at but that's okay. Still wanna see pics, even not complete

 

[cilyjr]

Well it seems as if very few are actually showing pictures of sump rooms. Mine is a mess and I rarely share pictures of it. but in the spirit of the thread here we go.

The tank is a standard 180 (6x2x2) and sits inwall with a finished basement room on 1 side. The other side is a fish/sump room (which is called laundry room by wife). I cannot give good imput on plumbing through the floor as I've not done it. I do use a standard bean animal drain with 3 pipes to the sump.

A quick finished side